Hyderabad, June 8 (Maxim News): A day’s National Startup Conclave, HSX-2019 was held here at IIIT—Hyderabad campus. It was jointly organized by Headstart, IIIT-Hyderabad, T-Hub and Telangana State Innovative Cell and others.
Some 600 investors, startups, government officials from 23 cities across India and World participated in the Conclave. Some of these cities include Hyderabad, Jaipur, Indore, Surat, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kochi, Coimbatore, Pune, Aurangabad, Gurgaon and others.
Giving an overview of the Startup Ecosystem in the State, Jayesh Ranjan, the Principal Secretary of Telangana government said, “Telangana boasts of the largest Technology Incubator in the country T-Hub. Soon we will have a 2nd phase of T-Hub. It will be five times larger than T-Hub. It will be ready by the end of the year. It will be the World’s largest incubation Center, he told the gathering. The Government will be investing five times what we have invested in T-Hub into the second phase. It will be roughly Rs 300crore, he announced.
The top Government official also told the gathering that the Telangana Government was contemplating to set up a fund to support Startups on the lines of some of the states already have. We are planning on it as it is one of the criteria for the Union Government to rank states on Startup ecosystem. And we don’t want to lag, he told the gathering.
The officer sold Telangana very hard as a Startup Destination to the Startups from across India to set up their base in Hyderabad and avail the benefits the Telangana State Government is offering. “We will support only homegrown startups. Come to Hyderabad. We will help you, Jayesh told them. We built an excellent infrastructure and ecosystem. We are one of the best in the country. We are the Startup Capital of the country. Come to Hyderabad, he told them”.
He highlighted for the information of the participants the various initiatives of the State government to help startups. Among others, he made a special mention of an initiative “T-Bridge”, which he termed as a pioneering work. The T-Bridge initiative connects India’s start-up ecosystem with the world. It gives startups global exposure. This platform is crafted with the support of partners in various Geographies. Currently, 100 local startups helped in getting international exposure. We are working on adding more and more bridging partners”, Jayesh Ranjan stated.
He also talked about Telangana Govt’s initiative to procure products from homegrown Startups. If they have products or services relevant to the government we will procure goods and services from them by way of bilateral understanding without going through the cumbersome procurement policy. In the last four years, well over three dozen are products and services are procured by various agencies of the state government. More such products and services are under our evaluation. Right now we are evaluating 15 to 20 products and services for procurement by government.
Hyderabad is the home to nearly 40 plus Research Labs of National, and International reputation also adds up to the overall startup system ecosystem, which not many cities in the country can boast, he shared with his audience.
This is our first event in Hyderabad. It is a totally a volunteers driven annual event of Headstart. Headstart is India’s largest grassroots level organization that supports entrepreneurship and startups sad Amit Singh, Co-Founder and MD of Headstart in his welcome address.
Delivering his Key-Note address, Ravi Narayan, CEO of T-Hub, India’s largest Technology Incubator said India’s Startup ecosystem is either second or third in the world. He termed Startups as Mini MNCs. There are 4000 Startups in the State of Telangana, he shared. These 4,000 startups in the State are contributing to around 15-20% of the overall startups in India, growing more than 30% year on year, whereas overall India growth is 15-20%.
The Government enables startups in the state to address public issues by finding solutions using the information online, which is a part of the Open Data Policy by the Government for Startups. This is the second state in India to have such a policy. Telangana funding stood at around $ 400 million in 2018, which came from around 32 deals during the same period, this is about 4% of overall, he stated, adding that Telangana has more than 50 incubators and Accelerators for supporting startups. There are around 300 to 400 MNCs operating in Telangana. About 30 to 40% are directly or indirectly associated with the startups’ ecosystem informed Ravi Narayan.
Ganapathy Venugopal, Co-Founder of Axilor Ventures, spoke on ‘The Next Wave of Entrepreneurship”. He said today founders are coming with prior startup experience now. The ambition of entrepreneurs of today is going global from day one or in the first 12 months of their operation. India is seen as a supermarket of large problems and entrepreneurs are rising to the occasion. The time to start a startup is NOW, he said. Along with the changing times, the canvas of Startup Ecosystem is also changing. Today the cost of building a product is getting lower and lower. The bar for success is very high now. Funding based on the CV is a thing of the past. If you are an investor, it is challenging to find great founders now. Next, five to seven years are five times more exciting than the past five years, he shared.
Participating in the fireside chat Sankat Atal and Ujjwal Trivedi said, India is still considered as the ‘services only’ nation. Still, we are unable to produce global products. We lack product thinking. But, things are changing. Mindset is changing. Today many products have gone international, and some are in the pipeline. Indians are one of the most entrepreneurial people in the world said Sanket Atal. (Maxim News)
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